https://iclfi.org/spartacist/en/2024-rcit-letter

Below is a letter from the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT) received on 7 October and our reply.

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Questions on your statement "Why Can’t Anyone Stop Netanyahu?”

RCIT rcit@thecommunists.net

To Spartacist  

Dear comrades,

We have a few questions regarding your latest statement "/Why Can’t Anyone Stop Netanyahu?/”. Surely, your document includes a number of correct statements which we share. Still there are some issues where we have important differences.

1) You criticize our comrades of the ISL for supposedly saying “/that because Israel is a settler-colonial state, basically nothing can be done now to break the Israeli working class from Zionism. For them the task is simply to stand in liberal solidarity with the Palestinians without seeking to affect Israeli society./” Now we are aware that we have differences on this issue. But leaving aside that you are not particularly concrete about what actually could be done to break the Israeli working class from Zionism in the current period, you do not deal with the strategic problem: the peculiar nature of the Israeli working class. We appreciate that you share now our thesis that Israel is a settler-colonial state (it would not have done harm to you to admit that we recognized this important fact a few decades before you did). But you ignore the consequences of this crucial thesis, i.e. that the Israeli working class has an aristocratic character as it is a /settler working class/ which only exists because of the expulsion and oppression of the Palestinian people. (See on this e.g. our theses “/Permanent Revolution in the Middle East and the Aristocratic Character of the Israeli Working Class/”)

2) You call for the “/recognition of full national rights, including self-determination for all nations/” and, at the same time, you say that the Israeli Jews are a nation. Logically, this means that you support the right of national self-determination of the Israeli Jews, i.e. a Jewish state in Palestine. Does this not mean that you adapt to the logic of Zionism, i.e. the expulsion of the Palestinian people from at least parts of their land? (See on this e.g. the book by our comrade Yossi Schwartz: Palestine and Zionism, we did also bring you a hard copy when we met in London; see also the essay: On some Questions of the Zionist Oppression and the Permanent Revolution in Palestine)

3) Furthermore, you call for an “/anti-imperialist front against Israel and the U.S./” But we are surprised that you only do so in the chapter about the BRICS but not when it comes to Hamas and Hezbollah! Surely, we have profound differences about the class character of China and Russia. But even if these would be non-imperialist states, it is absurd to only call for an anti-imperialist front against Israel and the U.S. when it comes to Russia and China (which have done nothing against Israel and the U.S. in this war since 7/10) but not when you talk about those very organisations which – despite their petty-bourgeois (or bourgeois) nationalist and Islamist character – are actually fighting the Zionists since one year (and with huge sacrifices)! Why is it so difficult for you to call for an anti-imperialist front with Hamas and Hezbollah and even more so after one year of war?!

Revolutionary Greetings,

For a more extensive elaboration of the RCIT’s positions on Palestine

see e.g.:

Yossi Schwartz: Palestine and Zionism. The History of Oppression of the Palestinian People. A Critical Account of the Myths of Zionism, April 2019

Yossi Schwartz and Michael Pröbsting: Permanent Revolution in the Middle East and the Aristocratic Character of the Israeli Working Class, July 2024

On some Questions of the Zionist Oppression and the Permanent Revolution in Palestine, May 2013

The Liberation of Palestine and the Arab Revolution, November 2023

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19 October

Dear comrades of the RCIT,

Thank you for your 7 October letter.

Before responding to your specific questions, we note your recent article “Lebanon War: Some Lessons from the Setbacks of the Resistance” (1 October). For the last year, the RCIT’s interventions in the Palestinian movement have centrally been focused on declaring support for the Palestinian resistance and, in our opinion, simply cheering it on. Many of our disagreements have been focused on this. However, we found this piece to be a positive development in that it sought to expose how the program and class character of the various nationalist and Islamist forces of the resistance fundamentally hamper the Palestinian liberation struggle. We agree with much of it and see it as an important step in the right direction.

However, we do note that the thrust of this piece contradicts a lot of what the RCIT has been publishing, particularly from your section in Israel/Occupied Palestine, the ISL [Internationalist Socialist League], especially its constant praising of the current armed struggle. We also note that the ISL has denounced our article “Why Can’t Anyone Stop Netanyahu?” (4 October) as “Zionist,” “counterrevolutionary” and promoting a two-state solution (“On the program of the ICL,” 7 October, published on your website). That, we must say, is completely fallacious and demagogic. We think that the ISL’s polemic reflects badly on the RCIT. It is one thing to write a sharp political polemic. It is another to do a slanderous hit job.

On the Israeli Working Class

But let’s look at the three points in your letter. First, you write:

“But leaving aside that you are not particularly concrete about what actually could be done to break the Israeli working class from Zionism in the current period, you do not deal with the strategic problem: the peculiar nature of the Israeli working class.”

According to you, we ignore the consequence of characterizing Israel as a settler-colonial state, which is that “the Israeli working class has an aristocratic character as it is a settler working class which only exists because of the expulsion and oppression of the Palestinian people.” While you do not state the programmatic implications of this, we understand that you believe it is impossible to break a section of the Israeli working class away from Zionism, and/or that efforts in this direction can only lead to adaptation to Zionism.

In your theses “Permanent Revolution in the Middle East and the Aristocratic Character of the Israeli Working Class,” you do assert the possibility of breaking a sector of Israeli workers from Zionism, but only as a result of external factors:

“Only a victory of the Arab revolution resulting in the overthrow of the pro-imperialist dictators and the creation of workers and fellahin republics or a strategic defeat of the Zionist state in wars with other countries in the Middle East will be able to thoroughly shatter the Israeli class society. Only in such a scenario will it be possible to break a sector of the Israeli-Jewish working class away from Zionism (or at least to push them to take a neutral position).”

Yossi Schwartz’s 7 October piece repeats essentially a similar line. The problem with this perspective is that it negates the subjective factor and places all its hopes entirely on external intervention. It is certainly correct that a deep social and political crisis will be necessary for large layers of Israeli workers to break from Zionism. However, it also requires a revolutionary party, rooted in the Israeli workers movement as well as in the army, that fights for such an outcome. Otherwise, the most likely reaction of the Israeli population confronted with an existential military threat would be a fight to the death under the banner of Zionism, or mass flight.

Your theses correctly criticize the Stalinists, Grantites and others who seek the unity of Arabs and Jews “via economic demands or with appeals to class unity.” We agree with you that such a strategy “can only result in political failure and opportunist adaption to Zionism.” As we have laid out in our recent Spartacist [No. 69, August 2024], the precondition for unity between Jews and Arab workers is opposition to imperialism, a rejection of all forms of Zionism and support to the national liberation of Palestine—which is rejected by the Grantites/Stalinists. But from the correct analysis that Israeli workers occupy a privileged position in the economy, and from correctly criticizing social-democratic capitulations to Zionism, the above theses essentially reject the need to build a revolutionary working-class party in Israel and, instead, put forward that the tasks of communists consist of waiting for the Arab revolution.

Despite being in a privileged position, Jewish Israeli workers endure harsh living conditions, rampant inequalities and forced military service in the name of a theocratic and corrupt regime which promises only war with the entire region as a pawn for U.S. imperialism. Despite the privileged position Israeli workers might enjoy in comparison to Palestinians, the material interests of Israeli workers point toward ending Palestinian oppression because, in the end, it drives down their living conditions, degrades every aspect of their lives and threatens their very survival in the region. Furthermore, the ongoing genocidal war, while fostering deep national unity, also puts tremendous strain on this tinder box, which is held together only by Zionist ideology.

Over seven million Jews are living in Israel. Whoever is serious about actually liberating Palestine and emancipating the entire Middle East must exploit whatever fractures, whatever conflicts and whatever grievances of the Israeli workers, the poor and the soldiers to weaken the Zionist fortress and advance Palestinian freedom. Even if these revolts remain, at first, within the framework of Zionism (e.g., the mass movement against Netanyahu’s judicial reform and the recent general strike), communists must insert a wedge into any such conflicts. Otherwise, an economic analysis of the privileged position of Israeli workers—whatever its factual merit—becomes a justification for abstention.

Comrades of the RCIT, like in Yossi’s 7 October piece, often draw parallels between the Israelis and the pieds noirs in colonial Algeria, the whites in apartheid South Africa and the Protestants in Ireland. There are indeed certain similarities, but invoking these examples does not argue against the need for an orientation toward the workers of the oppressor nation. Whether it is Israel, Ireland, South Africa or colonial Algeria, an important part of any revolutionary strategy was and is to win over the greatest possible numbers of workers from the oppressor nation to the liberation of the oppressed. Lenin and Trotsky always hammered on the need for communists to conduct systematic work in the proletariat as well as the army of the oppressor nation to fight for unity with the workers in oppressed nations, not in the manner of reformists or centrists adapting to social-chauvinism, but as revolutionaries seeking to break workers from their pro-imperialist leaders. In fact, the failure of nationalists to do this is one way in which they undermine the liberation struggle.

Your theses quote Trotsky’s “Letter to South African Revolutionaries,” but only to refer to his characterization of the white settlers as a “privileged, arrogant caste of whites.” But this is not all of what Trotsky said. Here is the full quote:

“The proletariat of the country consists of backward black pariahs and a privileged, arrogant caste of whites. In this lies the greatest difficulty of the whole situation. As the thesis correctly states, the economic convulsions of rotting capitalism must strongly shake the old barriers and facilitate the work of revolutionary coalescence.

“In any case, the worst crime on the part of the revolutionaries would be to give the smallest concessions to the privileges and prejudices of the whites. Whoever gives his little finger to the devil of chauvinism is lost.

“The revolutionary party must put before every white worker the following alternative: either with British imperialism and with the white bourgeoisie of South Africa, or with the black workers and peasants against the white feudalists and slave-owners and their agents in the ranks of the working class.”

No doubt you have read these lines many times. But Trotsky’s point is not to just dismiss the white caste because of its privileges but that the revolutionary party must put to them a clear alternative aiming at “revolutionary coalescence.” This also applies to Israel, where communists, while frontally opposing all shades of Zionism, must put to the Israeli workers a similar sharp alternative: either with the Zionist rulers, imperialism and its agents in the working class, or with the Arab masses. But without a revolutionary party in Israel, this alternative cannot and will not be posed to Israeli workers. Objective factors “facilitate the work of revolutionary coalescence”—a revolutionary party is the essential tool for it to take place.

Having said all of this, what is actually striking is that the ISL/RCIT is not oblivious to these things. The platform of the ISL (undated) explains:

“A victorious struggle by the Palestinians can only be achieved by means of a mass, armed uprising, under revolutionary leadership that will know how to split the masses of Israelis from Zionism and draw as many Israelis as possible to the side of the revolution in which the essence and the tone will be set by the Palestinian working class.”

Your platform explains the need to work inside the Israeli trade unions for the transitional program and even in the army. Point 10 explains:

“Revolutionary communists [in Israel] do not wait for a socialist revolution made by others. Therefore, we support and participate in all of the progressive struggles of the masses. This policy even includes support for the social movement struggle in Israel, where we disseminate the message that this movement can only be victorious if it links itself to the revolutionary struggle of the Palestinian people and the masses in the region. The tactic that led the petty-bourgeois leaders of the Palestinians, even in the name of the Red Flag, to adopt guerrilla warfare and acts of terror, has never proved itself as an efficient road to liberation, and only has helped Israel gain legitimization in world public opinion for the use of extensive state terror.”

We agree with these statements. But do they not also fail, in your words, to “deal with the strategic problem: the peculiar nature of the Israeli working class”? How does the ISL reconcile the above statements with Yossi Schwartz’s declaration that “the Israeli working class, that is, aristocratic workers, can break from Zionism in one of the two conditions or both—total defeat in the war or the victory of the Arab revolution”? And how is it that RCIT comrades legitimize Hamas’s actions—particularly that of October 7—while at the same time claiming to oppose the guerrilla road? Of course, taking a military side against Israel is necessary. But the strategy of Hamas is exactly the one your platform opposes.

It is necessary to quote from the platform of the ISL precisely because its practice is in fact in contradiction with these fine words. It is true that our organization has yet to elaborate a more concrete program for Israel today. So far, we have sought to establish clear general principles for communist work in Israel/Palestine based on the lessons of the failure of the past. However, this is already much closer to a communist policy than the work conducted by the ISL (at least recently). From its web page, its work consists of near-daily exposures of crimes of the Israeli army, hailing attacks by Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis and Iran and stating that the ISL militarily supports them. The only concrete things about the ISL’s work are short reports of small liberal Zionist demonstrations, where the RCIT sometimes raises abstract slogans against Zionism (such as “We will not kill nor die in the service of Zionism,” as reported in “Protest in Haifa,” 11 August).

The ISL page reads more like Schwartz’s personal blog, with his daily (and often overblown) impressions, rather than a tool of working-class struggle seeking to exploit the contradictions of Israeli society (thus there is very little in Hebrew or Arabic). One shocking example is that, despite the almost daily articles, not a single one mentions the recent general strike. None, at least recently, have touched on any issues confronting workers in Israel, whether Jews, Palestinians or others. (We might have missed some things, and maybe all your work in the army and trade unions—if there is any—is carried out underground. In any case, we would be glad to be proven wrong on this.) All of this is, to say the least, quite in contradiction with the words of the ISL’s platform.

Indeed, the RCIT’s practice as well as your criticisms all point to the fact that you reject splitting Israeli society along class lines. That makes it impossible to cut through the two pitfalls of either tailing Palestinian nationalism or tailing left Zionism. Furthermore, and with all due respect, limiting one’s activity in Israel to denouncing the Zionist government and stating military support to the Palestinian resistance also leads to capitulating to Zionist forces. While the Stalinists and Grantites directly adapt to the liberal Zionists and their agents in the working class, the ISL, while opposing Zionism, refuses to bring the struggle against these forces into the Israeli working class. In the end, both perspectives guarantee that Israeli workers will remain led by Zionists.

The logic of this liquidationist perspective is seen quite clearly in Yossi Schwartz’s piece. Putting aside the various demagogic statements and insults, Schwartz is mainly angry at our criticisms of the leaders of the Palestinian resistance:

“But instead of understanding the nature of the Zionist settler colonialist, the ICL, in typical arrogance, says that the mass pro-Palestinian movement lacks the proper program that only the ICL has.”

That we never claimed to be the only ones with the “proper program” is beside the point. More significant is the fact that this statement applies just as much to your own 1 October article, which is a critique of the pro-Palestinian forces who indeed lack a “proper program,” and to the ISL’s platform. Yossi Schwartz’s article reveals the liquidationist conclusion of the ISL, for whom communism in Israel amounts to militarily supporting Hamas or Hezbollah while dismissing the entire Israeli proletariat.

But this is not a unique trend. Your letter contains a parenthesis in which, responding to our recognition that Israel is a settler-colonial state, you quip, “It would not have done harm to you to admit that we recognized this important fact a few decades before you did.” We have no problem admitting that discussions with the RCIT have influenced us positively in some regard. However, this is not the case with this formulation. We are sure you are aware that this characterization is far from unique to the RCIT. Matzpen had already put it forward as early as the 1960s, and, today, it is used by countless liberals who all reject fighting inside the Israeli working class for a break with Zionism. (To mention only one example, take Daphna Thier and her article “Not an Ally: The Israeli Working Class” in the book Palestine: A Socialist Introduction). Now, this in itself is not an argument against your particular views. But it does raise the question: How do the RCIT’s views regarding the tasks of socialists in Israel as well as its actual practice differ in any way from those liberals?

There is a clear contradiction in the RCIT. On the one hand, the ISL platform opposes the petty-bourgeois guerrilla road for Palestine’s freedom and states the need to split the working class from Zionism as part of fighting for Palestinian freedom and revolution in the entire region. On the other hand, your theses on the Israeli working class, as well as your questions to us, point toward rejecting that course. The practice of the ISL/RCIT consists largely of cheering the Palestinian armed struggle while rejecting any orientation toward Israeli workers.

Self-Determination and Israeli Nation

On self-determination for Jews, you write:

“You call for the ‘recognition of full national rights, including self-determination for all nations’ and, at the same time, you say that the Israeli Jews are a nation. Logically, this means that you support the right of national self-determination of the Israeli Jews, i.e. a Jewish state in Palestine. Does this not mean that you adapt to the logic of Zionism, i.e. the expulsion of the Palestinian people from at least parts of their land?”

No, it does not. This slogan is raised in the section related to the Arab and Muslim world and is directed against the Iranian, Turkish and Arab regimes that oppress other nations. Now, one can take this slogan in isolation from our broader perspective and brandish it as proof that we are closeted Zionists, as Yossi Schwartz did. But to do that, one must ignore the fact that the article in question contains a lengthy polemic against Zionism (and liberal Zionism in particular) and that we have laid out our views regarding self-determination for Israeli Jews quite clearly in Spartacist No. 69:

“The question of self-determination for Israel is a red herring. Israelis already have a state, and its purpose is to stop the Palestinians from having their own. Under current conditions, refusing to fight for Palestinian self-determination in the name of Israeli self-determination simply amounts to defending the Zionist status quo. The real question is for the Palestinians to exercise their right of self-determination in a way compatible with the continued existence of a Jewish nation in the Near East. This is possible only in the form of a unified, binational state based on resolving the historical injustice committed against the Palestinians and where both nations enjoy full democratic rights in regard to language, culture and religion. Such a state can only be established by shattering the Zionist state and through a revolutionary overturn of the entire region.”

This article also makes clear in several places our opposition to any two-state solution as a capitulation to Zionism.

The disagreement seems to be based on our recognition that Israeli Jews are a nation. It is quite obvious that a nation of Israeli Jews—with a common political economy, language, culture, etc., distinct from other Jews—has constituted itself on the land of Palestinians and through their brutal expulsion. As we explain above, talk of self-determination for Israeli Jews is blackmail aimed at maintaining the Zionist status quo. But you seem to believe that recognizing the existence of an Israeli Jewish nation means support for the Zionist state. This seems to be why the ISL platform characterizes Israelis as a “people”(?) and not a nation, despite your recognition of obvious national characteristics.

For us, there is no contradiction in recognizing the existence of an Israeli Jewish nation and fighting to shatter the Zionist state. The latter is the precondition to realizing Palestinian self-determination. But the former—recognition of an Israeli nation—is also necessary to win over Israeli workers to the perspective of a binational state. In a sense, you do recognize this implicitly. The RCIT stands for a “multinational workers’ government” in Palestine. Apart from Palestinians, who would be the other nations making up such a workers government? Does this not include Israelis?

Anti-Imperialist United Front

You write: “You call for an ‘anti-imperialist front against Israel and the U.S.’ But we are surprised that you only do so in the chapter about the BRICS but not when it comes to Hamas and Hezbollah!” You complain: “Why is it so difficult for you to call for an anti-imperialist front with Hamas and Hezbollah and even more so after one year of war?!” The first section of our article raises the slogan: “Defend Gaza, the West Bank, Yemen, Lebanon and Iran against Zionist and imperialist attacks!” What is this, if not a call for a united front with all forces fighting Israel and the imperialists?

You have often raised criticisms regarding particular formulations, like how our first statement on the war did not say, “We side with Hamas” or, in this case, “for a united front with Hezbollah/Hamas.” You have insinuated that we have not raised such slogans out of capitulation to social-chauvinism and/or because of cowardice in the face of repression. These criticisms are, for us, real literary fetishism, devoid of any serious considerations for actual Marxist interventions in the working class, as well as in the pro-Palestinian movement.

For example, most of our work is directed at the working class in the West, and particularly in the U.S. Given the nature of Hamas/Hezbollah, the social-chauvinism of the union bureaucracy and the current consciousness of workers, even advanced ones, a slogan such as “military support to Hamas/Hezbollah” would cut us off from workers, who would understand it as a form of support to Islamism and a provocation. Rather, we always seek to put up front the question of opposing imperialism and to show, through workers’ own struggle, how the support by the leaders of the workers movement to the imperialist system undermines the position of the proletariat. (For example, see how a supporter of our views fought at the recent ILWU convention to oppose arms shipments to Israel, or how we tied the question of arms shipments to our intervention in the recent ILA strike).

We were glad to see the following statement in your declaration from 1 October:

“By its very nature, a struggle in solidarity with the Palestinian and Lebanese peoples must be not only Anti-Zionist but also anti-imperialist, i.e. against the ruling class in their own countries and their lackeys in the labour movement.”

However, we are still left wondering how you propose to carry out this struggle concretely. In our experience, there is no relation between how strongly groups claim to “have a military side with Hamas” and their actual work toward breaking the working class from social-chauvinism. In fact, the opposite tends to be the case. Groups such as the PSL have no problem cheerleading for the Palestinian leadership while at the same time capitulating to liberal forces in the U.S.

Even when it comes to interventions in the pro-Palestinian movement, in the Global South and particularly in the Arab and Muslim world, declaring military support to the resistance—while certainly correct—does not address the problems of the movement. Your own 1 October article is a testament to this. What the most advanced militants need to be convinced of is precisely the need for a Marxist strategy, as opposed to the current nationalist and Islamist dead ends. While this obviously requires taking a clear side with the Palestinian resistance against Israel and the U.S., that is only the beginning of the question.

Here is a telling anecdote from the work of our South African comrades during the recent united-front demonstrations with members of the EFF. (Here is the article about the first demonstration. A second one was held on 27 September.) Julius Malema, the leader of the EFF, has declared that if in power, he would send arms to Hamas. Thus, generally, those around the EFF know very well who they side with. During the recent united-front action, one of the slogans that generated the most discussions among EFF members we worked with was: “Palestinian liberation needs communist leadership.” One EFF member insisted on carrying our sign with this slogan, precisely because he was looking for another road than the current one.

Drawing a class line does not mean raising the most provocative slogans. Rather, it means engaging workers where they are at, exploiting their contradictions and laying out a path of struggle which objectively advances the fight against imperialism while seeking to split them from their pro-imperialist and/or nationalist leaders and illusions. However, this is never the consideration behind the various criticisms you have made of our slogans.

We hope this letter can serve toward further constructive exchange of views.

p.s. After finishing writing this letter, we saw your obituary “Yahya Sinwar—the Che Guevara of Our Times, Necrology for a Martyr Who Has Died for His People” (18 October). Needless to say, we found this to be quite groveling. Sinwar incarnated in many ways the contradiction of the Palestinian liberation struggle. On one side, he fought the Zionist war machine courageously all his life and until the very end. On the other, his strategy, Islamist politics and organization could only bring this fight to defeat. This is the similarity with Che Guevara. But, again, you deal only with one side of the question.